So if someone is against same sex marriage we call them a homophobe. If someone is against cross species marriage we call them a xenophobe. What do we call someone who is against human / robot marriage... and isn't it the same thing as the other two? If you're all about fair sexual preference then what's wrong with Joker and Edi? For that matter, what's wrong with pacman and pacman? Your position makes no sense.

If you don't have a problem with same sex romances, then why does it matter so much that Mrs. Pacman could conceivably be Mr. Pacman in woman's clothes?

Your justification for saying Pacman and Mrs. Pacman are the 2nd Worst Videogame romance comes across as more than a little bit Homophobic and Transphobic, regardless of your disclaimers before you attacked the entirely optional and player initiated gay sex choice in Dragon Age Origin.

It shouldn't matter that because of poor art design and limited graphics capabilities, the female Pacman sprite is just the male Pacman sprite with lipstick and a bow... and it certainly shouldn't matter enough for it to be the sole reason that romance is declared the 2nd Worst Videogame Romance (especially since it's not even about romance, it's about you being 'disturbed' by Mrs. Pacman resembling a 'Transvestite Pacman with whore's lipstick').

Yeah, I'm not buying the whole "I wasn't flirting with Zevran, really I wasn't!" If his flirtations were any more obvious there'd be a dialogue option reading PRESS HERE TO HAVE SEX. If you don't want to romance him, try refusing the massage he offers you. Because that's not something best friends do. :)

Jamash:If you don't have a problem with same sex romances, then why does it matter so much that Mrs. Pacman could conceivably be Mr. Pacman in woman's clothes?

Your justification for saying Pacman and Mrs. Pacman are the 2nd Worst Videogame romance comes across as more than a little bit Homophobic and Transphobic, regardless of your disclaimers before you attacked the entirely optional and player initiated gay sex choice in Dragon Age Origin.

It shouldn't matter that because of poor art design and limited graphics capabilities, the female Pacman sprite is just the male Pacman sprite with lipstick and a bow... and it certainly shouldn't matter enough for it to be the sole reason that romance is declared the 2nd Worst Videogame Romance (especially since it's not even about romance, it's about you being 'disturbed' by Mrs. Pacman resembling a 'Transvestite Pacman with whore's lipstick').

I almost felt like playing devils advocate here and defending this pick... but... naaaah.It was kinda weird to me that he said that.

With that being said, Idk if its wrong for a straight guy with a straight perspective to be grossed out by the idea of same sex relations. He's kinda wired to react that way when he imagines himself in those situations. As long as he doesn't discriminate towards other that feel that differently, then maybe it's fine.

Worst I can think of has to be Ethan and Madison in Heavy Rain. Oh you're a brooding, stressed-out, suspected serial killer that I've just met and have been spying on? Let's have sex. I love you.

I'm sorry we couldn't save your son, but it's okay, you can just have one with me!

It's not something I agree with, but it makes sense. Another one that could of worked was the Nathan Drake with both females from Uncharted 2 (yes, really). As one of them was written as a begrudging romance, as she hated Nathan Drake after breaking up with him a while back but she still shows attraction to him; the other one wasn't sure if she could resist the charms of the great American hero Nathan Drake.

The Star Wars Unleashed 2 entry was the closest, with no show of just how unlikeable the female character is. The reasons given were pedantic, even for a comedy list.

Joker and Edi, just because Edi is robotic? Mass Effect is a series priding it's self on a long distance future where same sex relationships and inter-species relationships doesn't even bat anyone's eye at all. "But Edi doesn't have anything between her legs!", well maybe (they never reveal it) but that's not the point. Romances, not sex affairs. Come on...

Pacman and Ms Pacman, because Ms Pacman may be trans? A little transphobic there. The previous entry of Dragon Age: Origins even nudges towards the homophobia, I think? It's hard to tell really because I think you're being half serious about trying to get a bonus to theft skills (since romance trees give bonuses I think), but to then get offended if it ends up in sex is just...

Honestly, I was interested in these series of videos. The top five FPS games seemed actually somewhat spot on. While I could argue other games were missed out like Killing Floor, it's a good list. However, this list really screams of immaturity, where romance seems like code for "fuck-buddy" or "sexual affair" and transsexualism and homosexuality just isn't right. I like my humour to be dashed with the phrase "oh yeeeah..." muttered from my mouth, and this lacks it. I'd be surprised if I check out any more videos of this series, I'm sorry.

There are countless video game "Romances" that are completely bland and pointless akin to Starkiller/Juno I could name. I'm going to have to single out Nero/Kyrie from Devil May Cry 4 here though. To say Kyrie has the personality of a wet cardboard box is giving her too much credit.

I actually kinda liked the Joker EDI romance. They can't have sex is a problem? Uh, Joker has a hard time having sex with anyone because of his condition. In the third game he says that even some light over the clothes action will break bones. You can feel affection to someone WITHOUT wanting to bone them you know.

And I kinda thought that you were going with selfcest with Pac-man, but it seems like you were going with 'ew, it's man on man/ ew it's transgender." The hell man?

I'm really glad, that angry posts about the Pacman Mrs. Pacman decision start to show up.The Pick really kind of offended me on multiple levels.First of all: there is absolutely no Story involved in the Pacman-Games that would tell ANYTHING about the Relation between Pacman and Mrs.Pacman. And simply fabricating a story in which Pacman and Mrs.Pacman have the same sex with one of them being in drag?And THEN being offended by THAT?

Any chance of projection there?Seriously, why should this ever be an issue, even if that was the story?But making things up and then being offended by your own story?WTF?

I think Mario, Peach and Bowser are in a polyamourous relationship honestly. It started in SMB where Peach found that being kidnapped was a real big turn-on to the point that, after sleeping on it (SMB2), Mario decided 'alright, let's test this theory and stage a kidnapping' (SMB3). This turned out to be the high point of Mario and Peaches relationship and introduced Bowser into the fold full time (which is why Mario keeps inviting Bowser to go Go-Karting and whatnot).

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Gregory Wollf:So if someone is against same sex marriage we call them a homophobe. If someone is against cross species marriage we call them a xenophobe. What do we call someone who is against human / robot marriage...

I think Technophobe would work there.

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Apparently there's a romance between Marcus and...his...female support in Gears of War but it seemed less existent than the Eclipse/Starkiller one considering the female support in GoW isn't shown in the first game for a full minute. I'm just going to make a blanket statement here and say 'most of them' because in many, MANY games the romantic subplot is worth less than the shrink-wrap that comes with new games.

Hmm. Kind of preferred these things when Lisa did them. Admittedly this is because whenever there was a dry patch in the humour, Lisa's cuteness and, well, tits could carry the viewer over.

This ep had no discussion value, and the 5 relationship bits seem to have been written by different people considering the sheer polar attitude shown. The final point with Mario for example, they could have gone into so much detail over the blatant innuendo (Peach asking Mario to come to the castle for some cake), the third wheel in the relationship being Bowser, and so on.

Also surprised the Cloud/Tifa/Aeris/(sometimes Barrat....) relationship didn't get mentioned either.

erttheking:I actually kinda liked the Joker EDI romance. They can't have sex is a problem? Uh, Joker has a hard time having sex with anyone because of his condition. In the third game he says that even some light over the clothes action will break bones. You can feel affection to someone WITHOUT wanting to bone them you know.

And I kinda thought that you were going with selfcest with Pac-man, but it seems like you were going with 'ew, it's man on man/ ew it's transgender." The hell man?

The Pac-Man / Ms. Pac-Man thing is really old and I'm surprised it made it in here. I think they pretty much said it all with "Drawn Together" where one of the characters confided her secrets to Ms. Pac-Man, and then Pac-Man takes out the bow and goes "look familiar" or something like that. It was funny at the time.

That said I had no real problem with Joker/EDI to be honest, the idea of romance between man and machine is an old one and tends to work pretty well. It comes up in Asimov's stories, Piers Anthony's "Adept" series, with the Dodger - Morgan romance in Shadowrun, and other places. In Mass Effect it seemed to me that they glossed over the details quite a bit, while EDI is probably fully functional as an infiltration unit, Joker's condition does prohibit a physical relationship *BUT* we've already seen they have some pretty advanced VR technology and such. If some science fiction is to be believed getting it on with an AI while having your brain jacked into cyberspace would be intense to say the least. I always felt that relationship would work out just fine with a little work and creativity.

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Outside of direct response, I'll say some of the ones people picked on like Rinoa/Squall, and Cloud/Aeris are some of my favorites, though to be honest I always felt Squall belonged with Quistis who is my favorite girl from the franchise so far.

For absolute worst in a game where romance was supposed to be a feature, I'd probably go with the entire cast of "Dragon Age 2". Where some bad coding and ambigious wording could lead to some surprise sex with Zevran in the first game, I don't see that as being a problem with the relationship itself. The problem I had with DA2 is that pretty much every relationship seemed forced to an extent... a certain dark magic elf being the only character I paticularly empathized with. Add to the fact that I couldn't see any real reason why anyone on either past wouldn't have blown a hole the size of a basketball through Anders' chest (I mean we saw what was coming a mile away) simply having him as a romance option was probably the most "WTF" thing in gaming. Add to this that he was first introduced in "Dragon Age: Origins" in one of the expansions, and they totally re-did him to make him work here and it's especially insulting.

There are doubtlessly a lot I'm not thinking of (that I'll wish I mentioned when I think back on this) but I've played so many games I'm sort of drawing a blank from overload. To be honest what mostly comes to mind in response to this is cases where I thought there should be more relevence to a relationship than there turned out to be. An example would be in say "Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines", one of the things you can do, is get a female vampire club owner with split personality disorder into the sack, which isn't the easiest thing to do. It's possible to do this in a couple of differant ways "saving" her and not. Typically it comes down to giving up a point or two you could use to advance your character though... in return other than a basic blackout screen and knowing you scored you get nothing, and you'd expect having been doing the horizontal bop with one of the highest ranking vampires in the city to be of more benefit later on given how the story develops than it is. The thread just more or less drops. I've noticed a lot of games falling into this trap, especially early on. I mean I can get at times why nobody has the guts to deliver graphic sex, but some acknowlegement would be nice.

I'll also be honest in saying (now that i've thought) that Geralt and Trish might make the list. I never really got how Geralt declares his love for her numerous times (in his own way) if you follow that through, yet he still insists on pretty much banging anything halfway decent looking with a skirt... and Trish doesn't even seem remotely phased by this, in fact I don't think it even comes up that this guys is pretty much ploughing every field in town. Not to mention it's kind of creepy that not one of the girls he's with ever seems to bring up up again, even when he's making the bedposts squeak two houses down. Conan-like man-slut aside, Conan at least did it by travelling the length and breadth of his world, he kind of had a love interest or two in each location he visited, Geralt is pretty much systematically working his way through every good looking lady in a limited geographic area where you'd think SOMEONE would talk. :)

Making a credible romance in a video game is pretty difficult, I'd admit. It's not like film, where two actors/actresses can sell a romance through acting and believable dialogue. And I don't pretend to know what the missing ingridient is.

However, I think making a Top 5 list is pretty fraught with peril. While I don't believe for a second Josh is a member of the Westburough Baptist Church, he certainly deserves criticism for going with low-hanging fruit like Joker/EDI and Mr. and Ms. Pac Man. I recommend running a video like this past a few folks to see if it might cause offence. And if you do that already, you should consider adding others.

I've never played the second game, but I do remember in the first game their "romance" being so under-developed and forced. When they they kissed, by brother and I both just groaned because of how dumb it was.

Denamic:Ewww, gay stuff. I'm all for LGBT! Possibly tans and gay, ewww!What? I have a feeling they didn't really think this one through.

Also, I didn't mind Joker's romance with EDI. In fact, I liked it. As for EDI not having the 'parts'; she can probably be 'upgraded'.

i think he is more referring to the fact that you immediately start a romance with any character in the dragon age series, if you dont respond like a dick and just are nice.this happens always in all dragon age entries...

I used to have a friend in college who was REALLY into fat chicks. Seriously, they were the only ones who got him hot. He even married one.

The fact that I and most of the others in our group (we tactfully kept our mouths shut) were not only NOT attracted to his choice of girls but were actively "Ewwww"'ed by the thought of having sex with any girls like the ones he was into didn't qualify as prejudice--just personal preference.

At best he's just being too honest for PC. Like the saying goes "Nothing gets a man into more trouble than telling the truth." [1]

The thing with Pac Man/Ms. Pac Man struck me as a reach--like he needed to come up with someone well known who he could make a joke about. The way he did it was just badly delivered.

Personally I really liked the Joker and Edi relationship although if they ever actually were to consummate their relationship Joker's bone disease would severely complicate things.

There's nothing particularly wrong with Zevran's relationship path, although Zevran is so easy that it does feel like he would have thrown himself at Shale if he thought he was being given an opening. As far as Dragon Age romances go felt like the Anders relationship in Dragon Age 2 was much more awkward.

2 things. I always figured EDI had artificial woman parts. The robot she took over was an AI shell made for infiltration and blending in with humans to gain an advantage for Cerberus. Female spies have used sex and seduction since time immemorial and I doubt that would have escaped the illusive man's attention when reviewing her specs.

What kind of job would Mario do in the Castle, exactly? I don't see the princess dropping bobombs in the toilet, either literally or figuratively and the toad mushrooms of the place could be flushed themselves. They aren't clogging up shit.

I'm going to go out and a limb and say almost all Bioware romances sucks to an incredible degree. They have the super stilted, super boring, super timewasting 'talk again in 3 missions' mechanic (normally), it can be hard to avoid relationships without sounding like a dick and they are just long lists of really flat people with no personality and no real reason to be together other than, this is a story and people are pared up in stories.

Particularly1. Carth2. Liara3. Bastila4. Ashley5. Kaiden6. Thane (and don't get me wrong, I liked the idea of his story and the idea of his character, but the execution was dull. They didn't share enough time with each other to buy a real relationship)7. The tech lady from ME38. Jacob

Garrus and Tali kind of get a pass because they aren't dull people (although the interaction system is still incredibly stupid) but they're aliens. I'm not against intimate relationships across aliens, I just mean the insert rod A into slot B business really shouldn't be possible when slot B evolved independently on an entirely different planet.

I mean Turians are part-alienbird. Shouldn't they be laying eggs or something?

Miranda gets a pass because it makes sense that she would want sex in a casual trophy-taking way and I figured the relationship wasn't as serious and that Miranda was damaged in a way that Shepard could really support. She didn't really offer anything to Shepard, but thats more because Shep. is this semi-blank slate thing

Diana Kingston-Gabai:Yeah, I'm not buying the whole "I wasn't flirting with Zevran, really I wasn't!" If his flirtations were any more obvious there'd be a dialogue option reading PRESS HERE TO HAVE SEX. If you don't want to romance him, try refusing the massage he offers you. Because that's not something best friends do. :)

I'm not buying into it either. You can easily turn him down when he makes his obvious moves. I guess he just wanted to be an assassin so much that he decided to get there the quick way by seducing Zevran.

It's worth mentioning that (at least in the PC version) you can just save, seduce Zevran, shower him with gifts, etc, until he's willing to teach you the Assassin specialization, unlock it, and then reload back to that save - it'll still be unlocked for that character and every other character you'll play or have played. All specializations work this way.

Yeah, I'm with the others here: getting mildly homophobic and transphobic vibes from this guy. Not to mention a totally absent understanding of the concept of romance, and what it entails. I'll give you a hint: Romance does NOT automatically equal sex, and vice-versa. Different people get different things out of it.

In Origins, both Alistair and Morrigan are straight, so this can't happen unless you're of their preferred gender. And even then you'd have to be blind and deaf to not notice "THIS IS A FLIRT ATTEMPT" in all the relevant lines of dialogue. As for Zevran, I found it...really easy to avoid romance with him, while still being nice? I mean, one of the first things he says to you when you talk in private is that he thinks you're kinda hot, but you can politely turn him down right then and there and he won't try again unless you initiate it. (Leliana can, in fact, be accidentally romanced if you act sympathetic about her previous relationship, likely due to a bug, but that's it. And no sex scene happens unless you keep making the appropriate dialogue choices which are, again, really obvious.)

Seriously, I don't understand the criticism of the guy in the video, unless he's one of those "I'm fine with gay people as long as they don't do anything gay in my presence" guys. Or unless he's repressing something.

Anyway, this guy seemed too whiny and I've honestly had enough of whiny nerd commentary at this point. The market is saturated. (Side note, that whole "You should be doing Valentine's Day related things all year long instead of just that one day" thing is just silly. If you were constantly going out for nice dinners together, you'd go broke and get bored pretty quickly. Best to save it for special occasions.)

About BioWare, the only compelling romances I've had have been as a female player character with a male NPC. (Notably, Vector Hyllus in SWTOR and of course Alistair.) Probably because, since BioWare mainly caters to straight male players, the male NPCs have to actually be good characters (unless they're in the Mass Effect series or KOTOR, apparently) in order to still be relevant to someone who doesn't want to romance them, rather than just being sexy like most of the female characters are.

Rednog:Wait...why is Ms. Pacman and Pacman a relationship?If she was his wife it would be Mrs. Pacman but Ms. would mean she is related to him and not in a romantic relationship with him.

Not necessarily. "Ms" is just a neutral term that could mean either "Miss" or "Mrs," analogous to "Mr" since it doesn't give away your marital status. Some women don't like being defined by whether or not they're married. (Also, there's one to two less letters in it--saves money on ink.)